


you say hello (and i lose)

by plastics



Category: Instagram Influencers RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Character Study, F/F, Unrequited Love, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:50:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21952657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/pseuds/plastics
Summary: "I've always had this dream of, like, being that American in London who just accidentally bumps into the nice, handsome, alpha prince, and he obviously falls head over heals, and I get to, like, become a national patron of the arts and revitalize what it means to me a modern princess and just be, like,iconic.""Not a nice, handsome, alpha princess?" Natalie asked.Caroline laughed.
Relationships: Natalie Beach/Caroline Calloway
Comments: 17
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	you say hello (and i lose)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [derogatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/derogatory/gifts).

> Makes infinitely more sense if you read at least Natalie's essay first. This is a sort of between the scenes situation. The essay, deals with topics including sexual assault/harassment, addiction, and self-worth, and while I avoided dealing with them too head-on in this story, they're still there, in the shadows.
> 
> Title by Mitski, because she was always the only choice. Song is "Lonesome Love," "I Bet on Losing Dogs" coming up in a close second. Happy Yuletide to all, and thank you, derogatory, for giving me an excuse to write this.

Natalie presented late. Nineteen instead of sixteen, but often she imagined that those three years—her entire life before an A was added to her official identification—robbed her. If Natalie had known from the start that she was going to be something noteworthy, she would have carried herself differently. Taller. With more authority.

* * *

_ If _ you had to be a girl, and _ if _nature saw it fit to dump a secondary gender and another round of puberty into your lap, it’s generally accepted that being Caroline was the ideal: a beautiful omega, long blonde hair, an attitude like she went to charm school instead of Exeter, the air around her smelling sweet and fresh.

Even in a city like New York, being dynamic was something special, almost. Maybe that was why Caroline chose to sit next to her during that first class.

In reality, it was one of the last seats open, closest to the door. Caroline breezed in like she was somewhere important beforehand, doing something that justified the risk of fracturing their professor’s first impression. He was one of the shinier names at NYU, too. Younger, if still in the could-be-their-dad range.

But she still sat there, an easy flick of a smile, and Natalie couldn’t help but notice the way her freckles moved with it, just barely hidden by modest-coverage foundation.

* * *

It wasn’t that Natalie and her mother weren’t close. They talked about a lot of things, it was just that—Natalie didn’t know if it she knew before Natalie did how she would present or if it was just a progressive attempt at shedding gender norms, but it felt like being around Caroline taught her how to be a woman. The practice of it. How someone could live with the world twisting around her. When they walked home together, drunk enough they should probably take a cab, Caroline would wind her arm through Natalie’s, lean her head against her shoulder, and say, “I never have to worry with you around, Natalie, I know you’ll take care of me.”

With the knowledge came the awareness of her own inability to put on the same show. Even if she perfected her smile, a flirtatious giggle, twirled her blonde-at-the-ends hair, Natalie would never have that thing about her. Or, maybe more accurately, Natalie would always have this _ extra _thing about her, one that excluded her from gentleness.

* * *

The first guy Natalie has sex with is a beta, but he lets her ride him and doesn’t freak out when her whole body clenches and rolls with her knot practically milking his dick inside her, even when it drags on a minute, two, five. She buried her nose in his neck and twisted her fingers in his hair and thinks about how reading Mary Gaitskill wasn’t real preparation for this, not at all.

They were just friends. If they went on dates, it was surrounded by their other friends—Caroline had introduced them—and then Natalie went abroad and they were no longer within a handful of blocks from each other, there was no point in trying to stretch it out. He never wanted to hold her hand, never responded to her texts, and when she would walk back from his apartment at night, he never offered to walk her home, never asked her to call to make sure she was safe.

***

Natalie knew Caroline was something of an anglophile. It was hard _ not _to know the things and people Caroline held to the highest esteem, and when the first met up after Natalie’s semester in London, she had been so excited to unpack everything that she had experienced there. No British lovers, but museums, churches, four women holding the world up with the crown of their heads at St Pancras.

They’d hugged once they were both at the hotel, squeezing and swinging around each other. Natalie was self-conscious of her alpha-airplane-air stench, but Caroline was the same as ever, stunning even with her hair greasy from a day of travel.

“You will not _ believe _the semester I just had,” Natalie said.

Caroline’s face twisted and ended up in a smile as she responded, “I swear to God, I’m going to live it myself one day.” And then she had whipped out her phone and showed Natalie the macarons and tens of thousands of followers she’d been sharing her life with—not her real life, but still more than Natalie could steadily rely on—and Natalie knew, immediately, that whatever mimicry of a full, adult life she was trying to build would never compare to Caroline’s. 

With her cheek against Caroline’s shoulder, eyes on her phone’s screen, Natalie thought to herself, _ I know you, too. _

***

The first time Caroline came to the first of Natalie’s apartments, the one in Gowanus with the male model and the bunny and searing fluorescent lights, she’d given a self-deprecating tour, painfully aware of its faults. Caroline’s eyes and her smile had been wide—nervously so, maybe. She said, “How can you _ live _like this?”

After Natalie graduated and started taking those menial jobs one takes after graduating with a degree they did not know how to make real, Natalie told herself they were teaching her how to be an alpha. How to work, how to take care of herself so she could take care of others. She imagined herself a pulpy heroine, suffering the sort of misery that crystallized into nobility, narrative.

Of course, there were other women at the recycling plant, who worked in landscaping. Nearly all of her coworkers were betas, and nearly all of them had been working longer and harder than she was. It remained a fact that she was from New Haven, and that her parents were both white-collar professionals. Her childhood bedroom remained untouched.

***

If crawling back to Caroline made Natalie feel like a needy, malnourished dog whining at the back door, the mad rush to get the proposal and the manuscript felt like a greyhound in the prime of her career, drugged and sore with her eyes fixated on the finish line, a scratch behind the ears.

***

The second Natalie entered Caroline’s flat in Cambridge, she understood. Even after nine hours in airports and planes and Ubers, even though she’d never been that close to an omega in heat. The place was torn up, drawn up close or shoved aside, the scent of her radiating from where she nested.

“Caroline,” Natalie said—gasped, like there was a camera on set—and she jerked closer, even though she knew she probably shouldn’t, even though she didn’t know what Caroline wanted. “What do you—what can _ I—?” _

“Please, Natalie,” Caroline sobbed so perfectly.

So Natalie did, with her mouth and her hands and the box of luxury toys Caroline tucked away in the bottom drawer of her dresser. When the fever broke, Caroline whimpered and curled into Natalie, head resting above her heart, arms looped around her, holding her close.

It didn’t make sense, though. Caroline was on heat suppressants, didn’t bother with placebo weeks. And it was a constant, tight cycle: her contracting into the apartment, the furnishing, soft pillows against her heating face until she was whining with it, spreading her legs for Natalie.

She never bit Caroline, never claimed her in any real way, but in a sick, natural way, it made Natalie feel needed. On call, twenty-four seven, desperately needed, to take care of Caroline, the brand, the book. Like this was where she was meant to be.

***

It was all fake, of course. The Adderall fucking up Caroline’s hormones. But if this whole experienced proved anything, it was that even fake things were real—like those books Natalie would read and believe in so deeply until she realized they were about God.

Natalie was also on suppressants, had been since that routine blood test had come back with a biological curveball. So she didn’t recognize her own rut once its roots started digging in. They were in Amsterdam. It was so beautiful. Natalie wanted to hold Caroline’s hand and never, ever let go. She wanted to fuck, right there in the sunflowers outside the Van Gogh museum.

They kissed, just once, Natalie holding Caroline’s petal-lip between her teeth. Caroline pulled away and said, “God, that’s still so weird.”

***

Natalie liked L.A. and she liked her job there, but she couldn’t help the traditional New England reflex of thinking about it dismissively. _ A pencil store, _ she thought to herself, _ when I could have been part of a half-million dollar book deal. _ As if all she did was discuss the handfeel and hues with customers. She did inventory, organized the stockroom, learned the lifespan of pigments.

The space was beautiful, as were the people who went there and the things they made. Natalie cut her hair short, and it didn’t make her feel less like a part of that beautiful thing. It was female owned and operated, and functional, and if felt good to be part of that, too.

But what did it even mean, for Natalie to be reconnecting with her feminine side, if it was reconnecting and not socializing? She’s reminded on a fragment of an argument her and Caroline had once, when there was still some fraction of a glimmer of hope left that the book might get done, if only Natalie could push the right button, do enough work: “I mean, it’s just like an alpha. You always expect omegas to do all this extra emotional work and support whenever you guys break down, but when _ I, _ Caroline, an _ omega, _ show any cracks or vulnerabilities, it’s a sign of hysteria and, like, critical-mass unreliability. And you can think it’s different just because we’re both women, but it’s not. It’s not.”

Natalie was drafted what she thought of The Final Email in her head. She was trying to make it sound less bitchy, but she wanted to bitch, press caps lock and send _ DO NOT PUT ME IN ONE OF YOUR CAPTIONS, DO NOT ACT HEARTBROKEN, YOU DO NOT OWN WHO I AM!!!!! _


End file.
